Oil backed up, Iranians put it on idled ships,Sanctions hitting hard onIran

[ManuZ]

Bandar Abbas, Iran: The hulking tanker Neptune was floating aimlessly this week in the warm waters

The ship's real name was Iran Astaneh, and it was part of a fleet of about 65 Iranian tankers serving as floating storage facilities for Iranian oil, each one given a nautical makeover to conceal its origin and make a buyer easier to find. The Neptune had been floating there for a month, and local fishermen said there were two even larger tankers anchored nearby.

Iran, faced with increasingly stringent economic sanctions imposed by the international community to force it to abandon any ambitions to develop nuclear weapons, has been reluctant to reduce its oil production, fearing that doing so could damage its wells. But Iran has insufficient space to store the crude it cannot sell. So while it furiously works to build storage capacity on shore, it has turned to mothballing at sea.
"We have never seen so many just waiting around," said Rostam, a fisherman and smuggler who regularly works these waters.

After years of defiance and insistence that sanctions were barely being felt at home, Iranians are acknowledging the latest round with growing alarm. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that they were "the strongest yet."

International oil experts say Iranian exports have already been cut by at least a quarter since the beginning of the year, costing Iran roughly $10 billion so far in forgone revenues. Many experts say the pain is only beginning, since oil prices have been falling and Iran's sales should drop even more with the European embargo that went into effect on Sunday.

"They are getting squeezed," said Sadad Al Husseini, former executive vice president for exploration and development of Saudi Aramco, the state oil company. "It's too much trouble to buy Iranian oil. Why alienate the United States and Europe? And the rest of OPEC is not very happy with Iran either."

On Wednesday, a Kenyan oil official told Reuters that the country was canceling an agreement to import up to 80,000 barrels of oil a day from Iran after Britain warned Kenya that it could run afoul of the sanctions. Meanwhile, South Korea said its imports of Iranian oil fell by nearly 50 percent in May, compared with April.

The drop in crude sales has hit Tehran with multiple challenges. Besides the financial impact, Iran has to figure out what to do with all the oil it continues to produce. Iran is pumping about 2.8 million barrels a day - already down about one million barrels daily since the start of the year. But it is exporting only an estimated 1.6 to 1.8 million barrels a day.

The unsold crude is being stored in what has been estimated to be two-thirds of the Iranian tanker fleet. Most of the ships are sailing in circles around the Persian Gulf as Iran tries to sell the mostly heavy crude at bargain-basement prices.

International oil experts estimate that Iran is now warehousing as much as 40 million barrels - roughly two weeks of production - on the tankers. An additional 10 million barrels are in storage on shore.

"We are now forced to sell our most valuable export product in secret," said Nader Karimi Joni, an Iranian journalist specializing in oil. "Iran had a great reputation; now we have to falsify bills of lading, hide the oil's origin and store oil on ships."

The subterfuge operates on several levels, but here, on the waters off Bandar Abbas, it is all about the tanker, Neptune. Beneath the fresh black paint, the ship's hulk bore the name in English and Persian of the tanker company, NITC.

The ship, one of Iran's smallest, was built in 2000 in South Korea. It carried no flag, and its home port - Bushehr - had first been changed to Valletta, Malta, which had also been painted over. It now said Funafuti, the capital of the Pacific Ocean island nation of Tuvalu.

To conceal their positions - and perhaps to hide just how many loaded ships are at sea - Iran's oil tankers also frequently turn off their GPS tracking devices, according to IHS Fairplay, a London-based ship tracking data company. It mapped out the last-known destinations of all NITC tankers, including the Iran Astaneh, and concluded that 21 were last seen in the Persian Gulf.

"I hear there are a lot more up north close to the oil terminals," said Rostam, the smuggler, as he pulled his small craft up alongside the tanker.

Smugglers regularly zip across the Strait of Hormuz in small speedboats to the northern tip of Oman, Rostam and others said, picking up boxes of all kinds of black-market goods. Along the way, Rostam said, he sees the physical evidence of growing tension in the narrow waterway where one-fifth of the world's oil must travel to get to market.

"We constantly run into United States Navy," Rostam said. "They only stop us when our boat is filled with people. Not when we are shipping merchandise."

Iran's Revolutionary Guards navy is also present in the waters and has its headquarters in this port city, he said. The Iranian Navy operates mainly speedboats with missile launchers mounted on top, intending to swarm much larger American Navy ships with dozens of such boats in case of a confrontation.

Such conflict has happened before, and a defeat prompted Iran to change its navy's military doctrine. During a one-day conflict in these waters in 1988 between Iran and the United States, one Iranian frigate was sunk, while Iranian forces claimed to have brought down an American helicopter. Some months later, an American Navy ship shot down an Iranian civilian airliner, killing 290 people, an event that Iran commemorated on Monday. The country maintains the plane was deliberately shot down, while the United States says it was an accident.

The prospect of a confrontation now could grow as the pressure builds on Iran while the sanctions, and dropping oil prices, cut deeper into Tehran's financial lifeline.

Oil prices have fallen by nearly 10 percent since the beginning of the year - and roughly 20 percent from their peak in March - because of weakening demand from Europe, the United States and parts of the developing world, as well as increased production from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Libya. Oil experts estimate that Iran's oil export revenues are down about 35 percent compared with the beginning of the year.

Increasingly, Iran's officials are warning its citizens to prepare for tough times ahead. On Monday, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's foreign minister, made comparisons to the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq when he discussed with reporters the mounting pressures on Iran.

Iran's vice president, Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, speaking during a religious conference on Sunday, said his country would never be stopped, and he asked for people's support, state television reported. "Today, we are facing the heaviest of sanctions, and we ask people to help officials in this battle," he said.

Aboard the Neptune, the crew knew what that meant: killing more time baby-sitting for crude at sea. On Sunday, members of the crew trudged out beneath a blazing sun and hauled up the anchor. They knew they were not going anywhere, but they took the opportunity to clean off the rust. Then they shouted to passengers in a skiff below, trying to make a joke.

"Wait five minutes," a sailor said. "When we drop anchor again, you'll get great pictures."
Oil backed up, Iranians put it on idled ships | NDTV.com

 

[IranZamin]

Sanctions or not, we will find always ways and we will resist. Iranians are fighters

 

[Freddie]

Iran can do futures trading on oil export at discount on respective importer currency to cover the current economic blockade. This will help countries like India while Iran the nuclear issue is sorted out or US economy bounces back to prop up the US$ on its own feet. Haha

 

[Cherokee]

Sanctions or not, we will find always ways and we will resist. Iranians are fighters

Yes you will . Iran is Growing Despite Sanctions shows it's Strength

 

[Surenas]

Sanctions or not, we will find always ways and we will resist. Iranians are fighters

Of course. But what are we fighting for? We can always achieve a good nuclear infrastructure in Iran, but I would like to see all nuclear enrichment stop right now. Ordinary Iranians are fighting to get food on the table, while the mullahs are fighting their war with the west. I have spoken to family members in Iran and the situation is getting worse by the week. Even a poll on a Iranian website showed that a majority of Iranians is for stopping the enrichment now.

 

[Arian]

Of course. But what are we fighting for? We can always achieve a good nuclear infrastructure in Iran, but I would like to see all nuclear enrichment stop right now. Ordinary Iranians are fighting to get food on the table, while the mullahs are fighting their war with the west. I have spoken to family members in Iran and the situation is getting worse by the week. Even a poll on a Iranian website showed that a majority of Iranians is for stopping the enrichment now.

That poll was fake as the IRINN had been hacked. Even BBC polls showed that an overwhelming majority of Iranians are in favor of enrichment.
And no, ordinary Iranians aren't fighting to get food, probably your family members do, I don't know, you've asked them, but don't generalize it to others please.

 

[Serpentine]

Of course. But what are we fighting for? We can always achieve a good nuclear infrastructure in Iran, but I would like to see all nuclear enrichment stop right now. Ordinary Iranians are fighting to get food on the table, while the mullahs are fighting their war with the west. I have spoken to family members in Iran and the situation is getting worse by the week. Even a poll on a Iranian website showed that a majority of Iranians is for stopping the enrichment now.

So you say we stop enriching?So what?We refrain from our undeniable right just because Israel or U.S want that?What if after stopping enrichment,they say give half of Iran to us and put Iran under more sanctions.So guys like you will appear here saying give them half of the country,we will be happy with the other half.

Today it's enrichment and nuclear program,tomorrow its something else.

 

[Surenas]

That poll was fake as the IRINN had been hacked. Even BBC polls showed that an overwhelming majority of Iranians are in favor of enrichment.
And no, ordinary Iranians aren't fighting to get food, probably your family members do, I don't know, you've asked them, but don't generalize it to others please.

We know Iran's excuse when such things happen. Hacked by the west or MEK. I don't buy that.

My family members aren't fighting to get food, but they see prices rising everyday and other people who are fighting to buy food, pay their fixed costs, etc. I can show you various articles where ordinary Iranians are saying they have problems to buy all kind of goods. Even Thomas Erdbrink (NYT journalist) , who lives in Iran and is married to an Iranian women, is exactly saying the same.

So you say we stop enriching?So what?We refrain from our undeniable right just because Israel or U.S want that?What if after stopping enrichment,they say give half of Iran to us and put Iran under more sanctions.So guys like you will appear here saying give them half of the country,we will be happy with the other half.

Today it's enrichment and nuclear program,tomorrow its something else.

Doesn't matter. Ordinary Iranians don't see it as their war, but the war of the Mullahs against the west. The only victims are ordinary Iranians, while the regime is sitting comfortable in their rich houses.

 

[Arian]

We know Iran's excuse when such things happen. Hacked by the west or MEK. I don't buy that.

That's a possibility. They really didn't need to claim this, they could easily engineer and change the result themselves because the poll results were stored on their own servers so they had full access to it. So their claim makes sense. Also, the BBC Persian poll conducted months ago showed that Iranians were very supportive of the Iranian stance on enrichment issue. And for your information, the MEK doesn't have a cyber team, not a capable one at least.

My family members aren't fighting to get food, but they see prices rise everyday and other people who are fighting to buy food, pay their fixed costs, etc. I can show you various articles where ordinary Iranians are saying they have problems to buy all kind of goods. Even Thomas Erdbrink, who lives in Iran and is married to an Iranian women, is exactly saying the same.

Now that makes sense. Yes, prices are rising crazily in Tehran, I could confirm that as well, but no one's fighting to get food. Many people still go to luxury restaurants with their families because that seems to be one of the popular ways of wasting your night these days. LOL. I think it's mostly due to wrong policies of Ahmadinejad, we're importing meat from wrong places. For example, there's no reason that we import meat from Brazil anymore, because the new Brazilian government isn't as friendly as Da Silva toward Iran, so we don't need to keep our economic ties in the same level as before. We could import meat from Armenia instead, which is still a Christian country so the sheep meat is very cheap in there. The government certainly needs to do something about it. In Tehran the situation is bad and is becoming worse, mainly because the government isn't supporting Tehranis financially as it must, but in smaller cities, prices differ dramatically. In Iran the situation is kinda unlike the rest of the world, in Iran the poor are getting rich and the rich are getting poor, so it might look like the people are getting poor, but in fact many people in smaller cities, towns or villages are benefiting from Ahmadinejad's policy.
To me, I think the sanctions are only 50% or even less, the real problem is that Ahmadinejad doesn't care about Tehran because it's very obvious from his policies that he wants to take money from Tehranis, Esfahanis, Tabrizis, Shirazis and others and give it to poor areas who the direct cashes really help them.

 

[Serpentine]

We know Iran's excuse when such things happen. Hacked by the west or MEK. I don't buy that.

My family members aren't fighting to get food, but they see prices rising everyday and other people who are fighting to buy food, pay their fixed costs, etc. I can show you various articles where ordinary Iranians are saying they have problems to buy all kind of goods. Even Thomas Erdbrink (NYT journalist) , who lives in Iran and is married to an Iranian women, is exactly saying the same.



Doesn't matter. Ordinary Iranians don't see it as their war, but the war of the Mullahs against the west. The only victims are ordinary Iranians, while the regime is sitting comfortable in their rich houses.

Your words remind me of some pro-Shah expired elements who are sitting in U.S and Europe in expensive houses with the money they stole from Iranian people and crying for democracy and rights of Iranians,like that the son of Shah,Reza who is biggest failure of a human being.
You are wrong,most of Iranians,from secular,liberal to religious,from opposition to pro government,support Iran's nuclear program.Even western medias like CNN, NY times and even those snakes in BBC admit it.
We are paying the price for standing on our own feet,and indeed it have some consequences and casualties.We are experiencing the exact situation China was facing during the 70s.

 

[twilight]

That poll was fake as the IRINN had been hacked. Even BBC polls showed that an overwhelming majority of Iranians are in favor of enrichment.
And no, ordinary Iranians aren't fighting to get food, probably your family members do, I don't know, you've asked them, but don't generalize it to others please.

he isn't in Iran ....
he is in a country that using his girls and women to produce money ... I mean NL's ****** are really famous .... and he seeing NL as his first country as well ...

Iran is only belong to who live in it ....

 

[Surenas]

How can you say that Iranians aren't fighting to get food on their table, while 20% of the population lives in poverty and other 17% or under national interpretation of poverty. And the situation is getting worse by the day. You should all read this one:

Already Plagued by Inflation, Iran Is Bracing for Worse

TEHRAN — Bedeviled by government mismanagement of the economy and international sanctions over its nuclear program, Iran is in the grip of spiraling inflation. Just ask Ali, a fruit vendor in the capital whose business has been slow for months.
Related

People hurried by his lavish displays of red grapes, dark blue figs and ginger last week, with few stopping to make a purchase. “Who in Iran can afford to buy a pineapple costing $15?” he asked. “Nobody.”

But Ali is not complaining, because he is making a killing in his other line of work: currency speculation. “At least the dollars I bought are making a profit for me,” he said.

The imposition on Sunday of new international measures aimed at cutting Iran’s oil exports, its main source of income, threatens to make the distortion in the economy even worse. With the local currency, the rial, having lost 50 percent of its value in the last year against other currencies, consumer prices here are rising fast — officially by 25 percent annually, but even more than that, economists say.

Increasingly, the economy centers on speculation. In this evolving casino, the winners seize opportunities to make quick money on currency plays, while the losers watch their wealth and savings evaporate almost overnight.

At first glance, Tehran, the political and economical engine of Iran, is the same thriving metropolis it has long been, the city where Porsche sold more cars in 2011 than anywhere else in the Middle East. City parks are immaculately maintained, and streetlights are rarely broken. Supermarkets and stores brim with imported products, and homeless people are a rare sight on its streets.

But Iran’s diminishing ability to sell oil under sanctions, falling foreign currency reserves and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s erratic economic policies have combined to create an atmosphere in which citizens, banks, businesses and state institutions have started fending for themselves.

“The fact that all those Porsches are sold here is an indicator that some people are profiting from the bad economy,” said Hossein Raghfar, an economist at Al Zahra University here. “Everybody has started hustling on the side, in order to generate extra income,” he said. “Everybody is speculating.”

Some, like Ali the fruit seller, who would not give his full name, exchange their rials for dollars and other foreign currencies as fast as they can. More sophisticated investors invest their cash in land, apartments, art, cars and other assets that will rise in value as the rial plunges.

For those on the losing end, however, every day brings more bad news. The steep price rises are turning visits by Tehran homemakers to their neighborhood supermarkets into nerve-racking experiences, with the price of bread, for example, increasing 16-fold since the withdrawal of state subsidies in 2010.

“My life feels like I’m trying to swim up a waterfall,” said Dariush Namazi, 50, the manager of a bookstore. Having saved for years to buy a small apartment, he has found the value of his savings cut in half by the inflation, and still falling. “I had moved some strokes up the waterfall, but now I fell down and am spinning in the water.”

Western sanctions have hurt, economists say, particularly in denying Iran access to foreign currency reserves, which it had used to prop up the rial. Yet economists also agree that much of the damage to the economy has been self-inflicted, saying that the Ahmadinejad government went on an import spending spree after oil revenues started hitting record levels from 2005 on.

With the government buying so many goods from abroad, many domestic producers were forced to lay off workers and close factories. That, in turn, has made Iran more vulnerable to international sanctions, they say. Companies that might have helped produce goods to replace those blocked by sanctions have long since gone out of business, as the owners shifted their wealth to speculation, building and selling properties, foreign currency or raw materials.

Near the industrial city of Pakdasht, outside Tehran, rows of factory buildings stood idle in the burning summer sun, heavy locks on their metal gates. In the distance, columns of Turkish trucks thundered past, swirling up clouds of dust. There were no buses bringing in new shifts of workers, and instead of mechanical clatter filling the air, stray dogs barked in the distance.

In one of the few factories still operating, Manoucher, 60, an engineer turned industrialist, recalled that only a decade ago being a factory owner in Iran meant not only a secure income but also social admiration as a job creator and someone who was building Iran’s future.

“Nowadays, it means you are a loser,” he concluded. Men in blue overalls peeked nervously up toward the director’s window, perhaps fearing they could be next to be laid off. “I am responsible for these people,” said Manoucher, who did not want to disclose either his family name or what his factory makes, because he sells products to a government company.

Business was extremely bad, he said, mainly because the government company had not paid its bills for six months. “I blame myself for feeling that speculation was beneath me,” he said. “My family and all my business partners would be rich now had we invested in building, lands and foreign exchange.”

For Iran’s army of employees, even state jobs no longer hold security. On Thursday, an official within Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps admitted in an interview with the corps’ own publication, Sobh-e Sadegh, that the government had been late in paying soldiers their wages.

Government officials and lawmakers have been quick to blame the West for Iran’s troubles. Last week, the head of Parliament, Ali Larijani, accused the Ahmadinejad administration of failing to take measures to “counter the enemy’s hostile policies.”

Many economists, though, say that even without the sanctions, Iran would still have big problems: a legacy of inflationary oil spending and budget-busting state subsidies of food, gasoline and other basic items that encouraged overconsumption and the steady erosion of the country’s industrial base.

“Many fundaments of the economy of our country have been destroyed over the past years,” said Mr. Raghfar, the economist. “And now, slowly but surely, the chickens have come home to roost.”

How can you say that Iranians aren't fighting to get food on their table, while 20% of the population lives in poverty and other 17% or under national interpretation of poverty. And the situation is getting worse by the day. You should all read this one:

Already Plagued by Inflation, Iran Is Bracing for Worse

TEHRAN — Bedeviled by government mismanagement of the economy and international sanctions over its nuclear program, Iran is in the grip of spiraling inflation. Just ask Ali, a fruit vendor in the capital whose business has been slow for months.
Related

People hurried by his lavish displays of red grapes, dark blue figs and ginger last week, with few stopping to make a purchase. “Who in Iran can afford to buy a pineapple costing $15?” he asked. “Nobody.”

But Ali is not complaining, because he is making a killing in his other line of work: currency speculation. “At least the dollars I bought are making a profit for me,” he said.

The imposition on Sunday of new international measures aimed at cutting Iran’s oil exports, its main source of income, threatens to make the distortion in the economy even worse. With the local currency, the rial, having lost 50 percent of its value in the last year against other currencies, consumer prices here are rising fast — officially by 25 percent annually, but even more than that, economists say.

Increasingly, the economy centers on speculation. In this evolving casino, the winners seize opportunities to make quick money on currency plays, while the losers watch their wealth and savings evaporate almost overnight.

At first glance, Tehran, the political and economical engine of Iran, is the same thriving metropolis it has long been, the city where Porsche sold more cars in 2011 than anywhere else in the Middle East. City parks are immaculately maintained, and streetlights are rarely broken. Supermarkets and stores brim with imported products, and homeless people are a rare sight on its streets.

But Iran’s diminishing ability to sell oil under sanctions, falling foreign currency reserves and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s erratic economic policies have combined to create an atmosphere in which citizens, banks, businesses and state institutions have started fending for themselves.

“The fact that all those Porsches are sold here is an indicator that some people are profiting from the bad economy,” said Hossein Raghfar, an economist at Al Zahra University here. “Everybody has started hustling on the side, in order to generate extra income,” he said. “Everybody is speculating.”

Some, like Ali the fruit seller, who would not give his full name, exchange their rials for dollars and other foreign currencies as fast as they can. More sophisticated investors invest their cash in land, apartments, art, cars and other assets that will rise in value as the rial plunges.

For those on the losing end, however, every day brings more bad news. The steep price rises are turning visits by Tehran homemakers to their neighborhood supermarkets into nerve-racking experiences, with the price of bread, for example, increasing 16-fold since the withdrawal of state subsidies in 2010.

“My life feels like I’m trying to swim up a waterfall,” said Dariush Namazi, 50, the manager of a bookstore. Having saved for years to buy a small apartment, he has found the value of his savings cut in half by the inflation, and still falling. “I had moved some strokes up the waterfall, but now I fell down and am spinning in the water.”

Western sanctions have hurt, economists say, particularly in denying Iran access to foreign currency reserves, which it had used to prop up the rial. Yet economists also agree that much of the damage to the economy has been self-inflicted, saying that the Ahmadinejad government went on an import spending spree after oil revenues started hitting record levels from 2005 on.

With the government buying so many goods from abroad, many domestic producers were forced to lay off workers and close factories. That, in turn, has made Iran more vulnerable to international sanctions, they say. Companies that might have helped produce goods to replace those blocked by sanctions have long since gone out of business, as the owners shifted their wealth to speculation, building and selling properties, foreign currency or raw materials.

Near the industrial city of Pakdasht, outside Tehran, rows of factory buildings stood idle in the burning summer sun, heavy locks on their metal gates. In the distance, columns of Turkish trucks thundered past, swirling up clouds of dust. There were no buses bringing in new shifts of workers, and instead of mechanical clatter filling the air, stray dogs barked in the distance.

In one of the few factories still operating, Manoucher, 60, an engineer turned industrialist, recalled that only a decade ago being a factory owner in Iran meant not only a secure income but also social admiration as a job creator and someone who was building Iran’s future.

“Nowadays, it means you are a loser,” he concluded. Men in blue overalls peeked nervously up toward the director’s window, perhaps fearing they could be next to be laid off. “I am responsible for these people,” said Manoucher, who did not want to disclose either his family name or what his factory makes, because he sells products to a government company.

Business was extremely bad, he said, mainly because the government company had not paid its bills for six months. “I blame myself for feeling that speculation was beneath me,” he said. “My family and all my business partners would be rich now had we invested in building, lands and foreign exchange.”

For Iran’s army of employees, even state jobs no longer hold security. On Thursday, an official within Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps admitted in an interview with the corps’ own publication, Sobh-e Sadegh, that the government had been late in paying soldiers their wages.

Government officials and lawmakers have been quick to blame the West for Iran’s troubles. Last week, the head of Parliament, Ali Larijani, accused the Ahmadinejad administration of failing to take measures to “counter the enemy’s hostile policies.”

Many economists, though, say that even without the sanctions, Iran would still have big problems: a legacy of inflationary oil spending and budget-busting state subsidies of food, gasoline and other basic items that encouraged overconsumption and the steady erosion of the country’s industrial base.

“Many fundaments of the economy of our country have been destroyed over the past years,” said Mr. Raghfar, the economist. “And now, slowly but surely, the chickens have come home to roost.”

 

[IranZamin]

Your words remind me of some pro-Shah expired elements who are sitting in U.S and Europe in expensive houses with the money they stole from Iranian people and crying for democracy and rights of Iranians,like that the son of Shah,Reza who is biggest failure of a human being.
You are wrong,most of Iranians,from secular,liberal to religious,from opposition to pro government,support Iran's nuclear program.Even western medias like CNN, NY times and even those snakes in BBC admit it.
We are paying the price for standing on our own feet,and indeed it have some consequences and casualties.We are experiencing the exact situation China was facing during the 70s.

We are experiencing worse, the Chinese didnt got their professors and scientists killed by the barbars

 

[Surenas]

he isn't in Iran ....

That's right. But I have almost daily contact with Iranians over there.

he is in a country that using his girls and women to produce money ... I mean NL's ****** are really famous .... and he seeing NL as his first country as well ...

Most prostitutes here are Eastern-European. We have all kind of rules for them to work here. But should we talk about prostitutes in Tehran or other big Iranian cities? Should we talk about Iran's drug addicts? Before you want to attack other countries, look at your own social problems in the country.

Iran is only belong to who live in it ....

Is that why your idol in your avatar had to come all the way from France to Iran?

 

[Arian]

How can you say that Iranians aren't fighting to get food on their table, while 20% of the population lives in poverty and other 17% or under national interpretation of poverty. And the situation is getting worse by the day. You should all read this one:

Poverty in Iran stands at 20% according to whom? you or payvand or aliens? LOL
Poverty in Iran (according to the UNHCR it means an average income of less than 1.5$ per day) stands at below 2% (in fact the interval 0% to 2%), just like all developed countries. With the distribution of cash to poor Iranian families, any Iranian who has registered for subsidy cashes is paid almost 1$ per day. That means if we even talk about the higher standard of poverty according to the UNHCR and we define poverty by an average income of less than 2.5$ per day, still less than 5% of Iranians will be below the line.

According to the UNHCR, Iran is an upper-middle income country with a PPP per capita of +13,000. That, by no definitions, means the situation of Iranians is bad and since the ratio of dollar to IRR has increased then you could expect that in new calculations Iran's Purchase Power Parity GDP increases. It depends though, because as you know the central bank of Iran has fixed the rate of dollar at ~12,000 Rials for the government budget, even though dollar is traded as high as 20,000 in the local market but still that will be the ratio used by the IMF, World Bank or other economic institutions.

So what I'm trying to get at is by no means you could indicate that poverty in Iran is like 20% now and in future the percentage of the poor will even decrease in statistics. Yes, you could build an arbitrary list and put anything you want in it and then by statistics come with a number that if an Iranian family has an average monthly income of less than 2,000$ then it's poor, but you shouldn't expect others to accept your numbers. As long as UN reports are concerned, Iranians are getting richer, better educated, the GINI coefficient is decreasing and life expectancy is getting higher. That shows a growth in Iran's human development index and that means the situation is good.
Pineapple is 15$? You must be kidding. You mean pineapple is 30,000 Tomans? Really? Since when? I stopped reading the article just after that. Please do some research before talking about poverty.